Workflow Composer Automation Suite At-A-Glance

At-A-Glance

Highlights • Accelerate time-to-value with turnkey network automation suites, easily customize automation as skills and requirements change • Reduce time-to-resolution with automation suites for network lifecycle automation that are backed by a world-class support organization • Increase agility beyond Day 0 by automating the entire network lifecycle — provisioning, validation, troubleshooting, and remediation of Extreme Networks infrastructure • Streamline end-to-end IT operations and increase IT agility with event-driven crossdomain automation

Extreme Workflow Composer Automation Suites Accelerate Time-to-Value with Turnkey Automation To unleash new levels of business innovation and competitive advantage, today’s organizations are embracing digital transformation. However, their success depends on building an agile business and agile IT. In the digital era, automation is key to IT agility. The lack of network lifecycle automation and the inability of the network to align with IT operations and tool chains is the single biggest inhibitor to an organization’s ability to capitalize on digitalization. Network infrastructures continue to be highly labor-intensive as advancements in network automation have remained embedded in proprietary systems and focused on service provisioning. Additionally, network operator training has been slow to evolve from a CLI-centric to an API-centric management model. But with 66 percent of IT organizations aspiring to emulate successful cloud provider architectures, automation, and agility1, it is clear that the network and the operational model must transform. Workflow Composer Automation Suites are specifically designed to jumpstart your transformation and accelerate time-to-value by providing everything needed for complete out-of-box network lifecycle automation

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ESG Research Report, Data Center Networking Trends, February 2016.

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for Extreme Networks infrastructure. And when combined with the DevOps-inspired, cross-domain automation of Extreme Workflow Composer™ for integrating with crossdomain technologies and platforms (see Figure 1), IT organizations can achieve immediate improvements in IT agility and accelerate their digital transformation.

The release model of the suites aligns with the agile nature of DevOps teams and methodologies. To respond quickly to rapidly changing customer needs, automation suites will be created and updated on a regular basis. As each suite reaches a certain level of maturity and testing, it will be posted as a “Technical Preview.” Registered Workflow Composer customers will be able to install and begin testing technical previews for free. Support for these versions is community-based. After each automation suite has reached a designated maturity and testing level, it will be posted for general availability and all applicable licensing requirements will be applied.

Extreme Workflow Composer Network Essentials

Data Center Fabrics

Internet Exchange Points*

Extreme Workflow Composer Designer UI

Admin UI

Secure Data Store

RBAC LDAP

Extreme Support

Workflow Composer Automation Suites

StackStorm Open Source Project and Integration Packs * Availability TBD

Figure 1: The Workflow Composer Automation Suite Architecture.

Automation Suite Overview Workflow Composer automation suites are ideal for IT organizations that want to embrace automation but have limited automation training and resources. These automation suites are a powerful collection of components assembled, built, and tested with Extreme infrastructure. Each suite consists of a collection of turnkey, yet customizable workflows, services, sensors, actions, rules, documentation, and in some cases a customized user interface. They are designed to provide out-of-box network lifecycle automation for commonly encountered tasks that address key use cases (see Table 1). Automation Suite

Description

Network Essentials

Automation building blocks for common networking tasks

Data Center Fabrics

Out-of-box automation for provisioning, validating, troubleshooting, and remediation of data center fabric networks

Internet Exchange Points

Out-of-box automation for provisioning, validating, troubleshooting, and remediation tasks commonly performed by Internet Exchange Point (IXP) providers

Table 1: Examples of Workflow Composer Automation Suites.

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Automation on Your Terms Workflow Composer Automation Suites allow IT organizations of all sizes to realize near-term business value while transitioning to automation at their own pace.

An Evolutionary Approach Yields Revolutionary Results The process of automating network infrastructure involves various steps, each of which delivers greater value but requires advancements in technology, skills, and processes. While some organizations are farther along in this process, many are seeking ways to get started by using their existing skills, resources, or investments. Extreme Workflow Composer, powered by StackStorm, and Extreme Automation Suites help IT organizations realize short- and long-term business value while transitioning to DevOps-inspired automation with confidence and at their own pace. As a result, they can: • Speed up time-to-value with automation suites that include everything needed for network l ifecycle automation and backed by a world-class support organization • Develop and execute an automation strategy at their own pace with turnkey, yet customizable, cross-domain and network workflow automation — all supported in multivendor network environments • Easily automate the entire network lifecycle — including provisioning, configuration validation, troubleshooting, and remediation — with event-driven automation • Automate with confidence by leveraging the power of proven DevOps methods, popular open source technologies, industry best practices, and a thriving technical community for peer collaboration and innovation

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Lifecycle Automation The automation suites are a powerful collection of automation workflows designed and tested to address common automation needs Each suite provides workflows to automate the entire network lifecycle, including provisioning, validation, troubleshooting, and remediation of Extreme Networks infrastructure.

Network Automation Suites Examples of automation workflows by the Workflow Composer Automation Suite follow:

Network Essentials Provides automation building blocks for common networking tasks. Examples include:

• Validate BGP settings and state, BGP neighbors, BGP EVPN peering, and switch reachability • Troubleshoot and remediate issues with flow trace for end-to-end integrity or leaf-spine connectivity • Perform a “Support Save” • And more…

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) Provides out-of-box automation for IXP network operators. Examples include: • Add VLAN and VPLS ports for new customers • Add new customer MAC address to Layer 2 ACL (immediate or scheduled) • Place switch in maintenance mode

• Configure Edge Port VLAN, Layer 2 Port Channel, VLAN Interface, VRRPe, and VRF

• Validate MAC address

• Set Layer 2 and 3, and System MTU

• Validate VPLS

• Validate Edge Port Layer 2 port channel state, VLAN interface, VRRPe, and OS version

• Troubleshoot VPLS tunnel paths

• Place switch in maintenance mode • Configure Syslog, NTP, AAA, DNS, and SNMP v2c management services • And more… For the current list of automated tasks, view the Essentials Automation Suite Documentation

Data Center Fabrics Provides out-of-box provisioning and management automation of data center fabric networks with minimal training. Examples include: • Provision data center fabric underlay/overlay

• Validate LSP full mesh

• Perform a customer health check • Troubleshoot BGP status from route-server • Validate MPLS load balancing • Move customer to quarantine • And more…

Getting Started The Workflow Composer automation platform and automation suites are available as a free 90-day evaluation. For more information on the Workflow Composer automation platform or to download the free trial, visit www.extremenetworks.com/workflowcomposer.

• Add servers, switches, or Layer 2/3 tenants to fabrics • Upgrade fabric (scheduled, organized execution)

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